Dom or Co-Dom

Hey I have a question, are all corn morphs recessive? Ive looked but havent found much. Thanks

from what I know. There is one known codom morph. That is Ultra. There is another one that just came out I can't think of at the moment as well. But all others that I know are recessive

Ultra and Amel are allelic as are Motley and Stripe.

Their is a brand spankin' new mutation called Tessera that is either Dominant, Co-Dominant or Incomplete Dominant. They should find out this season which it is.

Most are simple recessive.

Bloodred or Diffusion is more of an incomplete dominant trait than a simple recessive because when you breed a bloodred to anything else some of the Blood bleeds through onto the hatchling making what is basically a visible het.

Here is a photographic example of what I'm talking about:



That is the result of breeding a male snow het hypo to a bloodred in '07. He is an Outcrossed Bloodred het for amel, anery, 50% het hypo. I have a lot of these from breeding my bloodred female to different morphs over the years.

Ultra is a simple recessive trait as when bred to a dominant normal corn you will get hets, but when paired up with an amel it acts similar to a co dom and you end up with 1/4 Ultra, 1/2 Ultramel, 1/4 amel.

Also Motley and Stripe are simple recessives but act kind of codominantly when paired together. Breed a Mot to a Stripe and you'll end up with roughly 1/2 Mots and 1/2 Striped Mots.

Tessera is widely believed to be the first true codominant trait (as far as I know) in corns. This is still being tested though to see if there is a super form.

I disagree with your hypothesis of Diffusion being Incomplete Dominant. For Diffusion to be Incomplete Dominant, the heterozygous would need to be consistently a different phenotype and it isn't. Sometimes heterozygous Diffusion express characteristics of the homozygous, but not always. The same goes for Caramel...Sometimes heterozygous Caramel express a more yellowed color. It is however, not a sure-fire way to identify hets for either mutation.

It has been suggested before to call cases like Diffusion and Caramel "Variable Dominant," though I have not heard that term in quite some time.

Also, Motley x Stripe produces het Motley Stripes (Motley-Stripes or Motley het Stripes, however you personally would like to work it). The offspring produced always have one copy of each gene (Motley & Stripe). If you pair a Motley with a het Motley Stripe, then you would get a mix of Motleys and het Motley-Stripes.

Hmmm, so that being said, I believe my Motley female is pregnant by an Albino. Does that mean i'll have a chance at Motley het Albinos? Or will they all be Normal het Motley-albino with the possibility of motley markings? Lol and here i thought corns were the simple snakes to breed.

Motley x Amel = Normals het Amel Motley

Oh, that's what i originally thought but from your post it made it sound like they're kinda co-do. But reading it again looks like thats only with Mots and stripes, are they the same morph just different "lines"? Like the ball python black pastel and cinnamon? Or just work together sometimes for some reason? Thanks for this info, very interesting.

Motley & Stripe are allelic which means they sit on the same locus. When they are heterozygous to each other (one allele of Motley and one allele of Stripe) the phenotype (look) of the snake is altered to look like a combination of the two. With Motley-Stripes the phenotype can look more like Motley, more like Stripe or an equal blend of the two. You can consider Motley & Stripe co-dominant to each other though some are of the opinion that Motley is recessive to Stripe. I do not agree that Motley is recessive to Stripe because you can get tweeners and nearly Stripes which you do not get with homozygous Motleys.

Cinnamon & Black Pastel are not allelic like Motley & Stripe but genotypically (genetically) the same morph but from different lines. At least this is the opinion of both NERD and RDR (and I agree) when I consulted them for BallPythonMorphGallery.com.

Because we do not have gene mapping for reptiles a lot of what we say in reference to reptile genetics is educated guesses based on what we know.

From what I read on www.cornsnakes.com forums, the motley mutant gene is considered dominant to the striped mutant gene. Because some snakes with a motley gene paired with a striped gene look like snakes with two motley genes. Of course, the motley gene is still a recessive mutant gene because it is recessive to its normal allele.